Following last week’s announcement that Simon & Schuster is making their backlist available to Scribd subscribers, at BEA Scribd announced an agreement with the Perseus Books Group as well. Perseus is providing “thousands of their amazing books to our readers,” and is the next largest publisher to participate after HarperCollins and S&S. Some people have been confused about the business terms Scribd presents to large publishers, even though we covered it last October when HarperCollins first explained their deal. As S&S reported to agents recently, authors “will receive their standard ebook royalty rate each time one of their books is read.” [After […]
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Announcements: Tor.com, the Imprint; Kirkus Prizes; and More
Science fiction & fantasy community website Tor.com is expanding its original fiction output with a new imprint devoted to publishing novellas, shorter novels, serializations, and other pieces of fiction exceeding 18,000 words. According to a blog post by the imprint, each DRM-free title will be available exclusively for purchase, and will also be available via POD and audio formats. A “select number of titles” will be considered for traditional print publishing as well. In announcing the imprint at an afternoon presentation at IDPF, Tor/Forge publisher Tom Doherty said: “We see it as a way of science fiction & fantasy to […]
BEA Data: BookBub Survey Shows Promotion Buyers Are Regular Power Readers
Josh Schanker of fast-growing BookBub presented some data intended to profile “price-sensitive ebook readers” at a BEA panel, based on a random survey of thousands of BookBub members earlier this month. The company “believes BookBub members are representative of bargain readers as a whole.” By their account, bargain ebook buyers are female (84 percent), 45 or older (70 percent); empty-nesters (58 percent); with higher-than-average income (64 percent); who read four or more books a month (59 percent). And most of them buy regularly-priced ebooks (77 percent) as well as discounted ones. Interestingly, their “platform share” is 49 percent Kindle; 26 […]
Hachette Answers; Will Discuss “Compensating for the Damage” of Amazon’s “Demand” After Dispute Is Settled
On Wednesday morning, Hachette Book Group issued another statement in reply to Amazon’s Tuesday night post: “It is good to see Amazon acknowledge that its business decisions significantly affect authors’ lives,” they open. “For reasons of their own, Amazon has limited its customers’ ability to buy more than 5,000 Hachette titles.” As for Amazon’s public offer to share the acknowledged impact on authors, HBG says: “Once we have reached…an agreement, we will be happy to discuss with Amazon its ideas about compensating authors for the damage its demand for improved terms may have done them, and to pass along any […]
From the Archives: Macmillan’s “Kindle Outage Adjustment”
Amazon’s statement Tuesday night indicated that they “offered to Hachette to fund 50 percent of an author pool – to be allocated by Hachette – to mitigate the impact of this dispute on author royalties, if Hachette funds the other 50 percent” and it added that “we did this with the publisher Macmillan some years ago.” We received a number of queries thereafter, from people who did not recall Macmillan’s Kindle Outage Adjustment. The publisher started making the additional payments to authors in 2010, and Macmillan ceo John Sargent wrote about it in a letter to agents and authors that […]
Target Plans eBooks, with Librify
In another BEA-timed announcement, Target plans to pair with start-up Librify to offer some form of ebook club/subscription service, though an “official launch is still several months off,” USA Today reports. As a result, the details are opaque for now, with Target indicating they will reveal more this summer. “The service will be targeted at women, especially young professionals and moms of the coveted Millennial generation.” Target spokeswoman Erica Julkowski says, “We are proud to partner with Librify to offer a differentiated experience, which focuses on social connectivity and book clubs. She adds, “It is a great solution for bringing a […]